Second Battle of Newbury

The Second Battle of Newbury occurred on 27 October 1644 during the First English Civil War. The Parliamentarian army fought the Royalist army to a draw near the site of the First Battle of Newbury, and King Charles I of England was able to withdraw unimpeded with his army; the draw at Newbury led to the formation of the New Model Army.

Background
By 1644, the Royalists had their capital at Oxford and controlled the Midlands, South West England, and Wales, and Parliament, based from London, controlled South East England, East Anglia, and the north. In the autumn of 1644, Parliament sent three armies to confront King Charles I of England's army at the small Berkshire town of Newbury, where they would have the King outnumbered and would be able to bring him to a potentially-decisive battle. The Cavaliers held strong positions at Shaw House and Speen Hill, while the Parliamentarians held Clay Hill and had 19,000 troops to Charles' less than 9,000. The Royalists placed 400 musketeers in trenches in front of the house and 400 more in the gardens, digging in to protect the house from the Parliamentarian armies. The Parliamentarians decided to attack the Royalists from the front and rear simultaneously in a night attack, hoping to bypass Donnington Castle. By early afternoon of 27 October, the Parliamentarians had surrounded the King, and, at 3:00 PM, the Parliamentarians began their attack, signalled by a cannon shot.

Battle
The Parliamentarians faced stiff resistance from the Royalists, and their plan to launch a two-pronged attack failed due to the other half of the Parliamentarian force's failure to hear the signal cannon. It was not until an hour later that the other half of the Parliamentarian army began to join the battle, and the bold plan to trap the King failed. By dark, the fighting had stopped, and Parliament failed to destroy the King's army. That same night, the entire Royalist army quit Newbury and marched to Oxford; no Parliamentarian force blocked their escape route at the narrow Donnington Bridge, and Oliver Cromwell was denied the authority to give chase.

Aftermath
Cromwell was infuriated at the high command's incompetence, so he returned to Westminster and, during that winter, he worked with Parliament to create the country's first-ever national army, the New Model Army, as well as a law to remove all members of Parliament from military command to base leadership on ability instead of class.